This Blog

There are 100 million young people in the Middle East and North Africa. They are a force for change in a region at a crossroads. This blog is focused on ideas for tapping into this immense potential and meeting the aspirations for jobs, justice and dignity.

In Gaza, the drinking water tastes like seawater. Years of neglect and poor management, due in large part to recurring conflicts, has led to the steady depletion of Gaza’s natural aquifer. The empty aquifer has been invaded by seawater and, alarming for public health, untreated sewage. A series of droughts that struck Syria from 2006 onwards destroyed the livelihoods of millions of Syrians who relied on agriculture. The United Nations (UN) estimated that between 2008 and 2011, the drought affected 1.3 million people, with 800 000 people “severely affected.” People were forced from their land, poverty levels rose, and part of the population was plunged into deep food insecurity.

The conflict in Yemen, raging since early 2015, has had a devastating impact on the country’s infrastructure. Saana, the largest city in Yemen with a population of almost 2 million people, is completely without public electricity. In fact, six out of the 10 cities surveyed in mid-2017 by the World Bank, as part of the Yemen Dynamic Damage and Needs Assessment Phase II (DNA), had zero access to public electricity, with the remaining four cities having only a few hours of electricity per day.

Everyone agrees that conflicts impose huge costs on economies, including massive destruction of infrastructure and housing, disruption of trade, transport and production, not to mention the loss of lives and widespread human suffering. Yet quantitative estimates of these costs are hard to come by.

"We have electricity for two hours every 24 hours," says a high-ranking energy official in Gaza.

Up to just 10 years ago, Gaza enjoyed full, round-the-clock electricity supply 24 hours a day. But by 2016, this was reduced to 12 hours per day due to severe power shortages — and the situation has declined rapidly since.

On May 6th, a father left to get food for his family but never imagined the horror he would face when he returned. Like any other day, and any other house in their neighborhood, his children lit candles to be able to study as there was no electricity from the national grid. However this time, fire from the candles ripped through the house killing three of his children, all under six, and leaving one critically injured. The tragedy has led to harsh accusation between the rival Palestinian factions governing Gaza and the West Bank over who is responsible for power cuts.

The Middle East and North Africa region has never faced such significant stress on its ageing infrastructure like it does today, with one of the most telling being the substantial increase in the need for electricity. It is estimated that electricity demand in the MENA region will increase by 84% by 2020, requiring an additional 135 GW of generation capacity and an investment of US$450 billion. The quest for new approaches to ensure adequate and reliable supply of electricity in the region is more urgent than ever before.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is a region of extremes. It has the highest unemployment rate in the developing world, with the rate for women and young people double the average. MENA economies are among the least diversified, with the Herfindahl index—a measure of the concentration of exports in a few commodities—ranging between 0.6 and 1 for most countries. The region had the highest number of electricity cuts per month. The ratio of public- to private-sector workers is the highest in the world. While, until recently, the region had been averaging 4-5 percent GDP growth, that average masked a highly volatile growth path.

The collapse of oil prices to levels unseen since the early 2000s has shaken markets and confidence in the health of major economies. Expert opinions about the factors driving the steep descent in oil prices include the lifting of economic sanctions on Iran. Yet, there is no consensus on the extent to which Iran’s return to markets has affected oil prices or the welfare of affected parties.

Tunisia faces some tough choices for meeting its future energy needs as the domestic production of gas is expected to start declining by 2020. Should it import more piped gas from Algeria or liquid natural gas (LNG) from the international market? Should it build an electricity interconnector to Sicily that would enable it to tap into southern Ital‎y’s power surplus? Or should it start importing coal for electricity production?

The agreement reached by 196 countries at Paris to collectively work to limit the growth of global average temperatures to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels is a landmark for efforts to avert the worst impact of climate change. At Paris, each agreed to do its part to promote sustainable energy. Countries in the Middle East and North Africa region are willing to do their share to mitigate climate change, as demonstrated by their respective Intended Nationally Determined Contributions.